SLU First Year Program students will take part in Fight Hunger 5K

St. Lawrence University First Year Program students are participating this Sunday in the  GardenShare Fight Hunger 5K.  Each of the First Year colleges (Brown, Campbell, Heaton, Herrick, Holmes, MacAllaster, Romer, Romoda, and Reiff) will send students to run in this event as well as raise money by getting friends and family to sponsor them.  Students interested in participating will have the opportunity to secure sponsorship from family/friends via GardenShare's online fundraising tools and will also collect “spare change” from other students in their residences.  

The college with the top number of participants and the most money raised, will “win” the inter-college competition.  The prize will be a Sergi’s pizza party in a lounge of the residence hall where the winning team lives. 

Fight Hunger 5K Details

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Remington Recreation Trail

Registration Starts at 12:30 pm

Walkers leave @ 1:00 pm

Runners leave @ 1:30 pm

Location:  Remington Recreation Trail, Canton

Best parking will be behind Maplewood and registration will take place in the pavilion between Maplewood and Partridge Knoll.

According to Jenny Hansen, Associate Dean of the First Year Program, "The point of this inter-college competition is not to have the fastest runners/walkers, but rather to inspire lots of our students to participate and raise money to fight food insecurity in the North Country."

There is still time to sign up, if you want to join these students and local residents at the Fight Hunger 5K.  Sign up here!

HOSPITALS CAN PROVIDE SUMMER MEALS

Federal laws require nonprofit hospitals to (1) help improve the health and well-being of the local communities they serve in order to maintain their nonprofit status and (2) complete a Community Health Needs Assessment, in collaboration with public health experts and community representatives, that identifies significant community health challenges in need of interventions. Taken together, these requirements extend community benefit activities to include things like “access to adequate nutrition” and other social determinants of illness. These assessments can provide opportunities for nonprofit hospitals to partner with the USDA Summer Food Service and other federally funded nutrition programs. Hospitals could serve free healthy in their clinics and cafeterias to children visiting the hospital for appointments or when they accompany family members being cared for as patients. Additionally, the sites can be “open,” thus allowing children in the community to receive a free meal.

Source: Food Research & Action Council, 8/16, Summer Meals at Hospitals

New book "A Square Meal"

Like us today, during the Great Depression our grandparents grappled with a barrage of advice from nutritionists on the best foods to eat. A new book, “A Square Meal” by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe is an absorbing account of how the Depression changed American eating habits. The Depression gave reformers the opportunity not simply to try to avert hunger, Ziegelman and Coe write, but to change the way America eats. These reformers believed that modern scientific research on nutrition offered the key to improving a misguided and wasteful American diet. First, Wilbur Atwater at Wesleyan University established baseline calorie needs and measured the caloric value of common foods.; then Elmer McCollum and others figured out which vitamins and trace elements were important. They argued that milk was the most perfect food. Armed with this information, nutritionists, home economists, and government officials convinced food companies to fortify their foods and advised homemakers on the best diets for their families. In the process, regional home cooking drowned in a sea of creamed casseroles and milky chowders, the authors assert.

Source: Wall Street Journal, 8/17/16, Depression Dining

Senator Gillibrand urges streamlining of Farmers Market Nutrition Program

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wrote this week to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) urging the Agency to assist states in creating and implementing an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system for Farmers’ Market Nutrition Programs (FMNP). By law, all federal nutrition programs are being transitioned to an EBT system by October 2020, but there is no plan for FMNPs. FMNPs allow beneficiaries, who include low-income woman, infants, and young children participating in the WIC program and Seniors, to redeem benefits at farmers markets, using paper vouchers valued at $4 each.

Read more, including the text of her letter, here.

Fall intern joins the team

My name is Jamie Oriol and I am one of GardenShare’s fall interns! Growing up in the suburban town of West Hartford, Connecticut, my interest in food systems really began when I signed up for the Sustainability Semester my freshman year at St. Lawrence. Through this experience, I began to learn about the large disconnect between so many Americans and their food source. Now a senior, I have become aware of the struggle people in poverty face trying to purchase healthy food, the lack of education of many Americans in how to prepare healthy food and where food comes from, and the many roadblocks created through policy that make it difficult to change the system. I believe that the food system in America, as well as people’s relationship with their food, needs to change, and I believe that organizations such as GardenShare are the way to help bring that change. For this reason, I am extremely excited to join the GardenShare team this fall.

                For a little information about myself, I am a huge fan of anything outdoors. In my free time you can often find me hiking, running, or swimming. I absolutely LOVE eating so I spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen attempting to cook. Although I’m not a great baker and do not like to follow instructions, I make up for it with my determination and am always up to make a fresh batch of cookies (as long as I can eat some). 

            If I were a superhero, I would without a doubt want to have the power to fly. This is because of the feeling of freedom that comes with this and the chance to see the world from a new angle. 

            I’d say my most recent accomplishment is becoming captain of the St. Lawrence field hockey team this year and I cannot wait to see how the season turns out!

If I could do anything, I would want to own a blueberry farm. Not only are blueberries the most delicious berry out there, in my opinion of course, but they also have so many uses! I would love to sell fresh blueberries, frozen blueberries, blueberry jams, blueberry deserts, and anything else that could possibly be made with blueberries. Blueberries make me happy and I’d love to help other people experience the same joy.  Other than blueberries, I also like to read. 

My favorite book for the last 3 years has been Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. I do not want to give anything away, but this book really helped opened my mind to the inequalities experienced by millions of people around the world as a result of globalization. It has a beautiful message and is an extremely worthy read. This book makes you think about how privileged Americans are just to be born into a developed country that has a system in place to protect its people with clean drinking water, welfare, and other government aid.

If anyone would like to learn any more fun facts about myself, talk about blueberries, or talk about issues surrounding America’s food system, I would love to hear from you! Looking forward to a great semester!

-Jamie

New intern joins the team at GardenShare

Hello From GardenShare!

My Name is Julia Callahan and I am happy to be wrapping up my St. Lawrence career as an intern at GardenShare. In December I will graduate with a Degree in Environmental Studies and a minor in Outdoor Studies.

When I arrived in Canton as freshman hailing from good ole’ suburbia Connecticut, I was unaware and unexposed to the infectious spirit of the rural North Country and it’s strong ability to spread localized impact. I was lucky enough to experience a dose of North Country Farm Culture, with Ann and Brian at Bittersweet Farm in the fall of 2014, and with Flip and Bob at littleGrasse Foodworks in the summer of 2015. Both of these farm-stays enlightened my understanding of the interconnection of land, community, and sustainability the North Country fosters. It was here, in Canton, that I fell in love with food (really, ask my mom). Access to and knowledge of local, nurturing food should be a right to all people. I admire the work of GardenShare to tackle the food system in a localized area, in order to conceptualize the broader global food system.

When I am not eating cabbage, I can be seen running around the streets of Canton, sipping coffee on the porch, exploring the Adirondack lakes in a canoe, picking veggies and flowers, planning the next time I will eat cabbage, and hanging out with my lovely friends, who inspire me every day.

-Julia

FOOD SECURITY FOR CHILDREN WITH SEVERE DISABILITIES

Millions of American children experience physical, intellectual, and emotional conditions that necessitate special health-related services. Some of these children live in low-income families and their special health care needs (SHCN) are so severe that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income. Despite this assistance, families with SHCN children are at greater risk of food insecurity than children with similar needs who do not receive SSI and those without SHCN. While this may seem counterintuitive, it is logical given that receiving SSI is associated with significant disability-related expenses that compete with other family needs, like food. A new report suggests several policy changes to alleviate this situation, including partially discounting SSI income when determining SNAP eligibility.

Source: Children’s Health Watch, 8/23/16, Children with Disabilities